Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Small-scale Diamond miners are seen here at the Marange Diamond Fields in Zimbabwe at the height of diamond fever. Zimbabwe's diamonds face an international ban from the Kimberley Certification Process in Swakopmund, Namibia. The Minister of Mines made a presentation yesterday in the coastal town and did not address the main concern: the presence of the army at the diamond fields. There is no doubt that government is panicking. Harare, Zimbabwe, 04 November 2009 Obert Mpofu, Zimbabwe's Minister of Mines and a Vice-presidential aspirant, is in Namibia where he is fighting against the tide, in a battle to block a proposed ban on the trade in Zimbabwe's diamonds. Mpofu, with a straight face, says that the government of Zimbabwe has done all that it can to comply with the recommendations of the Kimberley Certification Process Team that visited Zimbabwe earlier in the year. Talk about eating humble pie! The team recommended that soldiers be removed from the Marange Diamond Field...

Tendai, an illegal diamond miner at the Chiadzwa Diamond Fields shows where he was stabbed with a bayonet by soldiers whom he says he was working for. The people who compiled this report traveled to Zimbabwe as journalists. The report will now be presented to the Kimberly Process. It is devastating. Which, I fear, may lead to Mugabe clamping down again on foreign journalists, accusing them of acting as spies. Harare, Zimbabwe, 20 September 2009 An illegal miner has told a tale of horror from the Chiadzwa Diamond Fields to reporters under cover. Known as Tendai, the miner reveals that he escaped the strafing of the diamond fields by the miners and that, now, everyone at Chiadzwa works for the army "as slaves". Soldiers routinely go after miners whom they decide are not producing quite enough. Tendai was one of them. He was bayoneted through hi knees and stabbed repeatedly on the chest with knives. One of his co-workers died on the spot. The exercise was carried out in public, ...